Camera-based driver assistance systems which identify the course of the vehicle's own lane using the lane markings are now established on the market, and their use is already prescribed by law in certain applications. Typically, these driver assistance systems identify the course of the markings of their vehicle's own lane and the neighboring lanes and use these to estimate the position of the own vehicle relative to the lane markings. An unintentional departure from the lane can therefore be detected early on and the system can initiate a suitable reaction such as, for example, warn the driver of the departure from the lane or prevent the departure from the lane by controlling the steering.
Further developed driver assistance systems which not only warn the driver in the event of a departure from a lane or prevent the departure, but which are also intended to assist the driver, for example, with an avoiding maneuver, need more information on the possible path of their own vehicle for such a function than is determined by the above-mentioned purely lane marking-detecting systems. If, for example, the objective of a driver assistance system is to prevent an accident by means of a suitable automatic avoiding maneuver, such a system requires, in addition to information on its own lane, reliable information on whether a possible avoiding path is even trafficable, so that the vehicle does not sustain or cause more damage as a result of the avoiding maneuver than would be the case if it were to have an accident as a result of not making an avoiding maneuver. The determining of such information is referred to herein as a trafficability analysis.